As an avowed atheist living among a sea of believers (both locally and on the Internet), I have spent a lot of time discussing my beliefs (or lack thereof, as the case may be). The purpose of this blog is not to prove the non-existence of God or "de-convert" anybody from their faith, but simply to preserve some of these discussions and allow me to flesh them out through the process of writing them down, as well as to share them with anybody who might be interested in reading them.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Trying to Make Sense of Noah’s Ark

At
the time the story of Noah’s Ark was first written thousands of years
ago, it actually made some sort of sense to talk about building a boat
large enough to carry representative samples of each of the various
kinds of animal on earth. After all, the people who wrote the story
didn’t actually know about the existence of most of the different
species existing on earth. Sure, they knew about camels, horses, goats,
cows, sheep, wolves, cats, bears, lions, elephants, etc., but they had
no idea whatsoever about, say, kangaroos and koalas, sloths, penguins,
opossums, and all the rest of the animals that lived beyond their small
universe of experience. So if you’re only talking about hundreds of
different species instead of thousands (or millions), then it makes
perfect sense to think about somebody building an ark to hold them all.

OK, so maybe not perfect sense,
since you’d still have to deal with feeding them all, disposing of all
their waste, and constructing such a monstrous and unseaworthy vessel in
the first place using bronze age technology, but you get the point.
Those are all minor issue compared to the big one of fitting millions of
animals.

That was then, though. Nowadays, we
are fully aware of the vast number of different animals that exist today
across the globe and not even the most die-hard, blinded by faith,
Young Earth Creationist would ever consider denying the existence of
these animals. Nobody goes around claiming that kangaroos are a hoax
perpetuated by scientists the way that they might claim that evolution
is a hoax. After all, we can all go to zoos and actually see many
of the animals that were completely unknown to the authors of the Noah
story. So, given the fact that there truly are just way too many
different species of animals that could ever possibly fit onto a single
ark, even the most die-hard, blinded by faith, Young Earth Creationists
have to admit that it’s just a made up story, right?

Yeah,
right. And Flat-Earthers are all going to finally admit the Earth is
round because NASA has provided proof that it has satellites and space
stations orbiting the planet. Not gonna happen, sorry.

So, how do Biblical
literalists still make sense of the story of Noah’s Ark given what we
now know about the animal kingdom? Well, first of all, they claim that
there were certain types of animals that Noah didn’t need to bring on
board. Sea creatures, for example, could all survive in the water and
many species of insects could have probably survived by hanging out on
mats of floating vegetation or something similar. Forget the fact that
the sudden influx of fresh water and the co-mingling of fresh and salt
water would have killed off many marine creatures that have evolved to
only live in fresh or salt-water environments. It all sort of makes
sense, right?

Second of all, Noah only brought juvenile
members of each species onto the ark. Little baby animals (even little
baby dinosaurs) take up a lot less room and don’t eat nearly as much as
full-grown adult animals, right? I mean, ignore the fact that this isn’t
actually mentioned in the Biblical account anywhere, since it could have happened, right? Even if it did happen that way, though, we’re still talking about way too many animals to ever fit into an ark. Which brings us to…

Third, and most important of all, instead of bringing two (or, in some cases, seven) of each species of animal onto the ark, Noah brought two (or, in some cases, seven) of each “kind”
of animal. Now, “kind” is not a scientific term, but Young Earth
Creationists use a sort of “common sense” approach to determining what
is and is not a “kind.” For example, instead of bringing representative
samples of dogs, coyotes, jackals, dingos, hyenas, etc., on the ark,
Noah would have just brought a pair of some “dog-like” creature (perhaps
similar to a wolf). Similarly, instead of bringing lions, tigers,
jaguars, ocelots, lynxes, etc., Noah just brought a pair of “cats.”

So, yeah — perfectly sensible, right?

Except…
no. The problem with this explanation is that it requires the
speciation of thousands and thousands of different “kinds” to occur over
the last 4000 years at a speed which would make an evolutionary
biologist blush in embarrassment and without anybody actually noticing
it happening (Young earth Creationists love to attack things like
evolution by claiming it has never been observed, but then they are
perfectly willing to accept this).

Just to out
this into perspective, after the ark landed at Mt. Ararat, the
descendants of this breeding pair of “felines” would have had to rapidly
speciate to produce all the different types of cats we see today. Yes,
one breeding pair of “cat” was responsible for all the Lions, Tigers,
Jaguars, Panthers, Leopards, Ocelots, Lynxes (Canadian, Iberian and
Eurasian), House Cats (all the different breeds), Snow Leopards, African
Golden Cats, Asian Golden Cats, Bobcats, Caracals, Chinese Desert Cats,
Clouded Leopards, Fishing Cats, Servals, African Wild Cats, Andean
Mountain Cats, Black-footed Cats, Bornean Bay Cats, European Wild Cats,
Flat-headed Cats, Geoffroy’s Cats, Iriomote Cats, Jaguarundi, Jungle
Cats, Kodkods, Leopard Cats (different from leopards, mind you), Marbled
Cats, Margays, Oncillas, Pallas Cats, Pampas Cat, Pumas (a.k.a Mountain
Lions or Cougars), Rusty Spotted Cats and Sand Cats. And all this
happened in the last few thousand years or so without anybody seeing it
happen.

And that’s just cats, mind you. Repeat
the same process with horses (zebras, asses, etc.), dogs (wolves, foxes,
coyotes, etc.) and every other “kind” of creature for which we now have
many different existing species. All of this happening far more rapidly
than has ever been observed in nature, and all without a single person
in history ever noticing all these new species miraculously appearing
overnight (“Hey — that jaguar just gave birth to an ocelot!”).

Oh,
and since dinosaurs must have lived at the same time as humans, Noah
also had to bring one representative pair of “dinosaurs” on the ark as
well, but they were very small. And they died off right after the ark
landed. Or else they lived long enough for their offspring to cover the
earth with their fossils and then suddenly died off, again without
anybody actually seeing it happen even though it would have been
happening right in front of us during all of recorded history.

And,
of course, not only would this rapid speciation have to occur without
anybody ever taking note of it, but you would also need to explain how
all the animals managed to travel to all the distant parts of the word
where they eventually ended up. How did the Kangaroos and Koalas make it
to Australia? How did the Sloths make it to South America? How did the
penguins make it to Antarctica?

The only answer
to all of these questions that Biblical literalists can provide is, of
course, “God did it.” How could Noah build an ark big enough to carry
all the necessary animals with only Bronze Age technology? God showed
him how to do it. How could such a monstrosity be seaworthy? God
performed a miracle and kept it afloat. How could all the different
“kinds” of animals rapidly speciate and distribute themselves globally?
God made it happen. Etc., etc., etc. If you want to believe this, go for
it. God is a god of miracles, after all, and with God nothing is
impossible (so they say). But, please, I wish people would stop trying
to come up with rational-sounding and pseudo-scientific explanations for
how it was all possible or how the story could possibly make any sort
of sense. Just admit it was impossible and say that God can do
impossible things, end of story. Stop trying to prove that your
illogical and irrational beliefs are based in science and just own your
beliefs for what they are.